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Famous Effete Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Effete poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous effete poems. These examples illustrate what a famous effete poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry
...love, and these alone."

Well, again, in the Nutmeg State,
Dorothy Pratt is richly blest
With a relic of art and a land effete--
A pitcher of glass that's cut, not pressed.
And a Washington teapot is possessed
Down in Pelham by Marthy Stone--
Think ye now that I say in jest
"These do I love, and these alone?"

Were Hepsy Higgins inclined to mate,
Or Dorcas Eastman prone to invest
In Cupid's bonds, they could find their fate
In the bootless bard of Crockery Quest.
For they've ...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene



...rote
The clarion watchword of each Grecian school
And follow none, the flawless sword which smote
The pagan Hydra is an effete tool
Which we ourselves have blunted, what man now
Shall scale the august ancient heights and to old Reverence bow?

One such indeed I saw, but, Ichabod!
Gone is that last dear son of Italy,
Who being man died for the sake of God,
And whose unrisen bones sleep peacefully,
O guard him, guard him well, my Giotto's tower,
Thou marble lily of the lily tow...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar
...ly an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean,
A merciful putting away of what has been.

And this we know: Death is not Life, effete,
Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen
So marvellous things know well the end not yet.

Victor and vanquished are a-one in death:
Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say,
"Come, what was your record when you drew breath?"
But a big blot has hid each yesterday
So poor, so manifestly incomplete.
And your bright Promise, withered long ...Read more of this...
by Sorley, Charles
...art 
With Nature’s toiling for a new surprise; 
He may have been a cynic, who now, for all 
Of anything divine that his effete
Negation may have tasted, 
Saw truth in his own image, rather small, 
Forbore to fever the ephemeral, 
Found any barren height a good retreat 
From any swarming street,
And in the sun saw power superbly wasted; 
And when the primitive old-fashioned stars 
Came out again to shine on joys and wars 
More primitive, and all arrayed for doom, 
He may have ...Read more of this...
by Robinson, Edwin Arlington
...If external action is effete
and rhyme is outmoded,
I shall revert to you,
Habakkuk, as when in a Bible class
the teacher was speaking of unrhymed verse.
He said - and I think I repeat his exact words - 
"Hebrew poetry is prose
with a sort of heightened consciousness." Ecstasy affords
the occasion and expediency determines the form....Read more of this...
by Moore, Marianne



...new, 'mid stress and toil,
Are forged, that can absorb space, time and night.


—A palace—of an architecture grown
Effete, and weary 'neath its hundred years.
Whence voices vast invoke, instinct with fears,
The thunder in its flights toward the Unknown.


On the silent, even road—his eyes
Still fixed towards the waning light
That skirts the houses and walls as it dies—
The rope-maker, visionary white,
From depths of the evening's halo dim
Draws the horizons in ...Read more of this...
by Verhaeren, Emile
...e good old way
If you would win the prize;
It is to get a titled mate
All run down at the heel,
If you inquire of stock effete,
"Comme bien" or "Wie viel."

So he is wise who envieth not
A wealth of foreign speech,
Since with two phrases may be got
Whatever's in his reach;
For Europe is a soulless shrine
In which all classes kneel
Before twin idols, deemed divine--
"Comme bien" and "Wie viel."...Read more of this...
by Field, Eugene
...y an empty pail, a slate rubbed clean, 
A merciful putting away of what has been. 

And this we know: Death is not Life effete, 
Life crushed, the broken pail. We who have seen 
So marvellous things know well the end not yet. 

Victor and vanquished are a-one in death: 
Coward and brave: friend, foe. Ghosts do not say, 
"Come, what was your record when you drew breath?" 
But a big blot has hid each yesterday 
So poor, so manifestly incomplete. 
And your bright Promise, wither...Read more of this...
by Sorley, Charles

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Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry